


Blunder

by prepare4trouble



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hard Light, Post-Episode: s06e02 Legion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24699505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: After Legion, Rimmer has some minor trouble adjusting to hard light.
Relationships: Dave Lister & Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	Blunder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a dialogue prompts meme on Tumblr. Prompt was "This is why we can't have nice things".
> 
> This was supposed to be a lot shorter and to the point, but it kind of got away from me, as these things tend to do.

As he passed the door to Starbug’s sleeping quarters, Lister peeked his head inside. Rimmer was sitting on the lower bunk, the fingers of one hand appearing to caress the top of the blanket that covered the bed. Lister remained where he was for a moment, watching. He looked good in the blue uniform that seemed to have come with the hard light drive gifted to him by Legion. It suited him.

After they had returned to Starbug, once the hole from the escaping stardrive had been patched, Rimmer had excused himself and disappeared. That had been hours earlier, and Lister hadn’t seen him since. He had known where to find him, of course. It was a small ship; there wasn’t much room for privacy. Still, he had done his best to provide him with as much as they could spare while he readjusted.

“Hey,” he said quietly from the doorway. “How’s it going? Finished touching everything yet?”

Rimmer’s hand stilled on the bedcover and he looked up, frowning in faux confusion. “What?”

“That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? Touching stuff, feeling things, picking stuff up?” Lister shrugged. “I mean, I assumed. That’s what I’d be doing, anyway, if I was you.”

A flash of embarrassment flickered over his face before Rimmer covered it by turning quickly away. “Maybe,” he said.

Lister took a few steps into the small sleeping quarters and leaned against the wall. “So, what’s it like?” he asked. “Being able to touch again after all that time. Must be nice, right?”

“It’s…” Rimmer hesitated. “It’s incredible,” he said quietly. “All those years without being able to feel, I’d almost forgotten what it was like.”

Lister nodded. “You got Ingrid all unpacked yet?”

“Smeg off, Lister.”

Lister raised his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry, just asking.” He noticed Rimmer was holding something in one of his hands. “Hey, what’ve you got there?”

Rimmer glanced down, then quickly moved his hand as though he could hide the object. Appearing to realise it was too late for that, he sighed and turned it over to show Lister. It was a photograph. It was bent into a curved shape, and one corner had been creased and then folded back out. Lister reached out and took it from Rimmer’s hands to get a better look.

“Hey, this is mine,” Lister told him. “What happened to it?”

Rimmer looked away. “I did,” he said, in a voice that sounded like a confession.

“You did what?”

“I happened,” Rimmer told him. “I took it off the wall, just to feel the difference between the front and the back of the print. When I was done, I put it down on the bed to touch something else. Then I sat down. I’d forgotten that having a physical presence means you have to watch out of things like that.”

Lister put the photograph on his knee and straightened it out with his hands. It wasn’t too bad.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, honestly,” Rimmer told him.

“I know. It’s fine, it’ll unbend,” Lister told him. He picked the remaining blu-tack off the back of the photo and the wall, rolled it into a ball, then pulled it into four blobs that he put in each corner of the photograph and stuck it back on the wall. “See, you can barely notice,” he said.

“This is why we can’t have nice things, you know,” Rimmer said.

Lister frowned. It wasn’t that nice. “Why? Because you’ll sit on them? I dunno, Rimmer. Unless you know something about your arse that you’re not telling me, I can’t see that being a _major_ problem, even now you’ve got hard light.”

“No, not…” Rimmer shook his head. “I mean because one of us will always blunder in and destroy it. I mean, obviously it would normally be you.”

“Hey, I don’t…” Lister stopped. “No, never mind, you’re right.”

“The rest of the time it’s usually Kryten, but the Cat isn’t as graceful as he’d have us believe. But it’s never been me before.”

Lister shrugged. “Until now, it _couldn’t_ be you, because you couldn’t touch anything,” he said. “I mean, blundering tends to require a physical body. So, congrats, you’ve joined the blunder club, now you can do it too.”

Rimmer smiled.

“Actually, no. You’ll be worse than the rest of us for a while, won’t you?” Lister added. “Do you know how many times a day you walk through things without noticing?”

“What? No I don’t!” Rimmer told him.

“Yeah you do. You wouldn’t know because like I said, you don’t notice you’re doing it. Like you’ll go through a door, but your elbow goes through the wall. Or you walk across the sleeping quarters in the dark, half asleep, and don’t notice something on the floor so you just walk through it. I’m expecting to see all kinds of hilarious bumps and falls until you get used to this, Rimmer.”

Rimmer stared at him in horror. “I really do that? Walk through things?”

“Well, you really _used_ to. Not anymore though, right?” Lister brought a hand down onto Rimmer’s knee and grinned. It felt so real; so human.

“No,” said Rimmer. He looked down at the hand in fascination. “No, I suppose not. You really don’t mind about the photograph?”

Lister shrugged. “Accidents happen. It’s fine, Rimmer. You can hardly even see the damage.” He moved his hand from Rimmer’s leg, and got to his feet. “Anyway, Kryten’s making dinner from the supplies we nicked from Legion’s space station, if you fancy it.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know you still don’t _need_ to eat, but if you want to…”

Rimmer was on his feet before Lister could finish the invitation. 

Lister shook his head. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” he said.

Rimmer headed quickly to the door. As he stepped through, his shoulder bumped hard against the doorframe and he staggered backward.

“Told you,” Lister told him, and grinned.

Rimmer raised his hand to rub his shoulder, and turned to look at Lister. To Lister’s surprise and delight, he smiled back.


End file.
